Rebecca MacKinnon's postings about work, reading, and ideas from 2004-2011.

October 08, 2009

Since Obama became President - and yes, I voted for him - there has been a great deal of optimism and energy around the idea that the Internet can be used to improve or "reboot" our democracy. The Administration has hired some great people to work on making government more open and transparent.

This is all great. But how much good will all of this nifty e-government do for American democracy if citizens' rights to privacy and free expression are not also fiercely defended?

On that score, the Obama Administration has been dangerously disappointing. This month's news makes me feel like the U.S. is getting more like China in some ways.

The FTC has released new commercial endorsement guidelines for anybody who ever posts anything online, be it on a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon reviews, or wherever (except professional journalists who are exempt thanks to the First Amendment which seems only to apply to some Americans these days). While the guidelines are well intentioned and aim to promote honesty in product promotion and protect consumers on the Internet, they are so broad and vaguely worded that they could only be enforced selectively and unfairly. As Salon's Jack Shafer describes them: "They are written so broadly that if you blog about a good and service in such a way that the FTC construes as an endorsement, the commission has a predicate to investigate." What's more: "As I read the guidelines, the FTC could investigate you if you did disclose but it was not satisfied with the disclosure." See more critques from Dan Gillmor,Jeff Jarvis, the LA Times, and Jeff Bercovici at Daily Finance. As free speech activists living in authoritarian countries like China - or even pseudo-authoritarian pseudo-democracies like Singapore - will readily tell you, over-broad and vague regulations of speech are dangerous because there's no way to enforce them uniformly or fairly. So authorities enforce them selectively based on often arbitrary and generally un-transparent criteria. Such regulations become a great umbrella excuse to stifle speech that powerful people don't like for whatever reason. Over-broad regulations also have a chilling effect on speech because people tend to over-compensate in order to avoid trouble.

At the heart of the disagreement is the balance between national security and the public’s right to know. The best approach is to protect legitimate security claims while rejecting those that are made in the name of national security but are really aimed at avoiding embarrassment. That was the constant cry from the Bush administration as the public learned — through the unauthorized disclosure of confidential information — of prisoner abuse, secret C.I.A. prisons for terrorist suspects and warrantless wiretapping.

The Senate bill and a measure passed earlier in the House aim at a reasonable balance by relying on a federal judge to decide when security is not truly at risk and sources must be protected. The White House proposals would instruct judges to defer to the administration’s view of when and if a news leak presents a “significant” security leak. The executive branch would arrogate power to decide the public’s right to know by crimping the news media’s ability to make a case for disclosure.

If you want to create a chilling effect against any sort of whistleblowing on gov't corruption, that's what this proposal does. It basically lets the gov't say that the shield law only applies to whistleblowing that doesn't make the administration look bad. But, in any case where the administration isn't happy, it gets to wipe out the shield. Apparently, freedom of the press only applies to situations in which the administration is not embarrassed.

Dan Thomasson at Scripps Howard puts it this way: "Now it seems the president also has decided the people's right to know might not be all that beneficial to him or them."

Last but not least, there's the USA PATRIOT Act (full text here), which in 2001 expanded the government's powers to spy on American citizens in the course of anti-terror and criminal investigations. Three of its key provisions are up for reauthorization this year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will be considering them today (Thursday U.S. time). The Economist's Democracy in America blog has an excellent summary of the current state of play, which I take the liberty to quote at great length:

The Obama administration had requested reauthorisationof all three "sunsetting" Patriot-Act powers: roving wiretap authority; license to spy on so-called "lone wolf" terror suspects under the broad aegis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act; and "section 215" orders, which allow investigators to compel the production of business records or any other "tangible thing". Yet the Justice Department had also signaled its openness to "modifications" designed to protect the privacy of Americans and check potential abuses.

Russ Feingold took them up on the offer with an ambitious proposal that would have substantially overhauled the new foreign-intelligence-surveillance architecture. More modest was a proposal by Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee's chairman, that would have somewhat constrained the scope of both 215 orders and the controversial "national security letters", which internal probes found to be subject to endemic misuse.

Yet even the more moderate reforms proved a bridge too far for Dianne Feinstein, who swooped in at the last minute before last week's legislative mark-up session with her own substitute bill, stripping away even the feeble restraints Mr Leahy had supported. The reason was the purported fear of FBI officials that these constraints might interfere with a number of "ongoing investigations", intimated to have sprung from the arrest of suspected bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi. Over Mr Feingold's objections, Ms Feinstein's language was made the template for renewal legislation, and the committee is expected to report a final draft out to the full Senate on Thursday.

I'm worried that most liberals and progressives have stopped paying attention and are just assuming everything will work out ok now that "our guy" is in office. I was tremendously excited about Obama's candidacy. I was jubilant when he got elected. I don't see myself turning Republican any time in this lifetime, but if the Obama Administration doesn't start showing a bit more concern for American civil liberties - putting aside for the moment the question of whether he cares about anybody else's - I'm going to start wishing for a viable third party with a meaningful civil liberties and human rights platform.

June 20, 2008

Earlier today in Beijing, Chinese President Hu Jintao did a webcast with staff of "Strong China Forum," an online forum run by the People's Daily Online. See the English transcript here and the Chinese here.

More than 300 questions for President Hu were posted in advance by forum members. He only answered two softballs. One thread on Tianya reflects some people's dismay that the whole thing was "over as soon as it started." There has been some web chatter saying that not many people were able to get into that chatroom. The questions at Strong China Forum are supposed to be here, but so far I've been unable to access the page from my internet connection in London, even when I use a Chinese proxy. Fortunately the folks at China Digital Times got on, and provided this summary:

"Some complained, “Old Hu, lots of government money has been wasted by officials on feasts. Why don’t you stop it?” ” Why haven’t our salaries been increased while the prices of everything else are skyrocketing? “; “The stock market and housing market are collapsing. It is hard to find a job…”"

Some asked about policy and political issues, including some tricky ones: “What do you think of Taiwan’s democratization?” ; “How would you deal with wrong but well-intentioned opinions on the Internet?”

Despite the whole thing being gimmicky and generally content-free, I found the final part of Hu's webcast interesting:

Hu Jintao: We pay great attention to suggestions and advice from our netizens. We stress the idea of "putting people first" and "governing for the people." With this in mind, we need to listen to people's voices extensively and pool the people's wisdom when we take actions and make decisions. The web is an important channel for us to understand the concerns of the public and assemble the wisdom of the public.

Forum: Thanks you, Mr. General-Secretary. Dear friends, General-Secretary Hu Jintao's communication must conclude now as he has other things to do.

Hu Jintao: It is a pity that I cannot communicate more with the netizens today due to the time constraint. However, I will read and think carefully the comments and questions posted for me by our netizens.

As the BBC put it: "Mr Hu's appearance on a chat forum suggests that the party at least knows the importance of listening to the public." (UPDATE: More from Danwei.org here.)

As it happens, I just finished reading a book by Zheng Yongnian of Nottingham University titled Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China. It's an academic book which means that it costs an outrageous US$50 and is also dry and not written in a particularly entertaining style. But for anybody trying to make sense of how the Internet is changing Chinese politics and society, it's well worth a read if you can afford it or get somebody else (your institution's library or your company) to pay for it.

Zheng argues that while China is making no meaningful progress toward democratization, the Internet is nonetheless causing "political liberalization." The Internet in China, he believes, is enabling greater public deliberation about policy (within limits to be sure) as well as forcing the leadership to be more responsive to public opinion - or at least that segment of public opinion that is able to appear on the part of the Internet that you can access in China, which despite its limitations still gives Chinese citizens a conduit of expression that was not available before. Zheng points to several cases where public reaction to and discussion of information posted online led to policy changes: outrage over Sun Zhigang's death in detention led to abolition of the "Custody and Repatriation" system; outrage over the detention of outspoken rural business tycoon Sun Dawu created pressure on provincial governments and the central government to change policy practices that discriminate against the private sector. During the SARS outbreak, information, concerns (and wild rumors) posted on the Internet and sent through mobile SMS eventually broke down government attempts at tight information control. He also points to wildly unsuccessful cases: use of the Internet by the outlawed FLG and the opposition China Democracy Party to criticize the regime and call for an end to one-party rule by the CCP. What's the difference?

Zheng says that the difference between success and failure comes down to an online movement's strategy and objectives. The most spectacularly unsuccessful online movements (and the ones leading to the most brutal crackdowns both online and off) tend to advocate what he calls the "exit" option - i.e. that the Chinese people should exit one-party CCP rule, or that a particular group or territory might have the right to do so. The Chinese bureaucracy and leadership contains reformists and conservatives. However "when the regime is threatened by challengers, the soft-liners and hard-liners are likely to stand on the same side and fight the challengers." Successful online movements in China tend to use what he calls the "voice" option, or what other political scientists call the "cooperation option." The key to a successful effort to change government policy in China is to find a way to give reformist leaders and bureaucrats at all levels of government the ammunition they need to win out in arguments and power-struggles with their hard-line conservative colleagues. Reformists can point to what's being said in the chatrooms and blogs and in the edgier newspapers and argue that without change, there will be more unrest and public unhappiness - thus change is required to save the regime. Zheng writes: "the voice does not aim to undermine or overthrow the state. Instead, through a voice mechanism, the state can receive feedback from social groups to respond to state decline and improve its legitimacy."

In a similar vein, at the Chinese Internet Research Conference last week Jiang Min, an Assistant Professor at UNC-Charlotte, presented a paper titled Authoritarian Deliberation: Public Deliberation in China. Her argument centers around the idea - oft overlooked by Western punditry - that it's possible to have substantial amount of public deliberation about policy within an authoritarian state. Different authoritarian states have different levels of deliberation, and it's no substitute for the "democratic deliberation" in democratic countries when it comes to the ability of the governed to influence their government. Thus political deliberation needs to be divided into two categories: democratic and authoritarian. Within the "authoritarian" category, China is seeing growing amounts of deliberation taking place thanks to the Internet. Click here for a live-blogged summary of that session.

Immediately following her presentation came talks by Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times and Ashley Esreay of Harvard's Fairbank Center and Middlebury. (Click here for the blog summary.) Xiao (whose paper will be made available on the circ.asia website in the coming week) described numerous examples of how the Internet is enabling the powerless to challenge the powerful. Esreay, in his paper titled Political Discourse on Chinese Blogs presented the findings of his empirical research. (See the WSJ writeup of his presentation here.) He compared content on blogs and newspapers discussing news events in 2006 and found that 61% percent of blog posts analyzed contained "some form of criticism", compared to 19% of all newspaper articles analyzed. 36% percent of blog posts contained "pluralism" or discussion of more than one point of view, while only 5% of newspaper articles did. Thus he was able to empirically confirm the unscientific impression of most people who follow the Chinese Internet: "Compared to the content of mainstream, traditional media, blogs are much more likely to contain opposing perspectives and criticism of the state." I found his findings about blogs as economic watchdogs particularly interesting: "Another important finding was that bloggers criticize corporations five times more frequently than journalists, whose role in democratic societies has been to protect the interests of the public from transgression."

Here's a breakdown of the kinds of criticism found in the Chinese blog posts (click to enlarge):

...Which brings me to Roland Soong's presentation on Day 1, A Psychographic Segment of Chinese Bloggers. Using survey data about Chinese Internet users collected by the media research company he works for, Roland "created a 3-segment solution based upon 32 psychographic statements about personality, motivation, society, culture, technology and so on by the K-means algorithm" Here is how Roland describes three different kinds of people now coexisting in the Chinese blogosphere:

Segment 1: Not interested in latest technology; not interested in latest fashion; not interested in other people's opinions; don't want to told what to do ... Who do they sound like? Fenqing (angry young people)?

Segment 2: Easily swayed by other people; want to be told what to do; first to buy latest technology; follow western lifestyle; lesser respect for tradition ... Who do they sound like? These are groupies who follow whatever is au courant as reported on the Internet.

Segment 3: Interested in a lifestyle filled with challenges, novelties and changes; more interested in spending time meaningfully than just making money; ready to pay extra for environment-friendly products; appreciate companies which support public causes; willing to volunteer personal time for good causes ...

The data was collected before the Sichuan Earthquake, but in his talk, Roland suggests that it is this third group who came into their own and made their presence felt in the aftermath of the earthquake. Deborah Fallows suggested that the earthquake may have been a "break through" moment for the way in which people use the Internet, as 9/11 was for people in the U.S.

In his Sunday afternoon talk, Isaac Mao repeated his core view that the Chinese people need free-thinking before they can have free speech. He also believes that the Internet is facilitating the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated "social brain", which he believes "will be the key in the future of this country."

USC graduate student Peter Marolt, in his PhD dissertation, is attempting to create a new conceptual framework to help us understand what is going on in China. He is working to map how "spaces of dissent" come into being, and what is the linkage between deliberation and action.

...Which brings me back to the beginning of my last post and Lokman Tsui's argument: that cold-war paradigms, based on the information environment and state-society relations in the countries that once comprised the Soviet Block, are not only hindering the outside world's understanding of China but are contributing to misguided policies. This is not to say one shouldn't support efforts by many people in China to obtain greater freedom of speech and the right to choose their leaders. Of course we should. The point is, strategies and approaches should be grounded in actual facts rather than over-simplified, romantic cold-war notions, or these efforts will not only fail but will also be rejected and denounced by the people you're ostensibly trying to help.

Next week at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest, we'll be spending the first day talking about how free speech advocacy can be improved and upgraded for the Internet age. I hope we'll be addressing some tough questions about what works - and what no longer works so well - when it comes to the strategies and tactics of today's human rights organizations and movements. What can the Chinese people do to convince Hu Jintao to pay attention to their concerns? Is there anything that well-meaning outsiders who care about China can constructively do to facilitate that process (or at least not hinder it) and if so what is it?

February 12, 2008

February 02, 2008

Perhaps this video will help inspire you! If you're an American citizen living abroad don't forget to vote in the Global Democratic Primary starting on Tuesday. If you didn't register to vote online, you can still vote in person at voting centers in 33 countries. Click here for the full list. 22 delegates representing Democrats living overseas are at stake, and in this primary, every single delegate counts.

I hope you'll vote for Obama. He can make us proud to be an American once again in ways that I don't think Clinton will be able to do - though I'll take her over McCain any day. Obama's election would prove that despite my country's considerable hypocrisy, the American dream and the values we claim to espouse actually can mean something real.

As many people have pointed out, last week's debate in L.A. showed that Clinton and Obama are extremely close on policy substance. But what they represent as people ends up being quite important in terms of where the United States is headed in the future. Obama represents a generational shift and a new direction for the country, and I really do think he will inspire a new generation to feel that they can make a difference in public affairs to a much greater extent than Clinton can; Clinton represents dynastic politics, back-to-the-90s-with-Bill-back-in-the-white-house, and a much more familiar form of democrat vs. republican partisanship. But don't just take it from me. Andrew Sullivan has an excellent essay on today's Times of London arguing why Obama is the best candidate. On the Huffington Post, Sherman Yellen explains how his family is split down the middle, and why he's voting for Obama despite his strong admiration for Clinton. Dave Winer wrote a couple of greatposts last month about how the Clintons have thoroughly turned him off. My former Berkman colleague David Weinberger recently wrote this eloquent endorsement after Edwards dropped out:

I have to look back to being a high school kid handing out leaflets
for Bobby Kennedy to find the same sense of hope that Obama inspires in
me. In part, I think, it’s the pure youth of the candidate. My
generation had its chance and produced Bill Clinton and He Who Needs
Forgetting. Time for us to pass on the baton, as quickly as possibly.
And, in part it’s the sense of common cause, common enthusiasm, and
common hope across this country’s class and race lines. It’s
awe-inspiring and oh so best-of-America to be out in streets dappled
with so many colors.

Then there’s this: With McCain the likely Republican
candidate, it’ll be character vs. character. And in that matchup, Obama
is by far the Democrats’ best choice.

Clinton's return to the White House that she occupied for eight years as first lady would resurrect some of the triumph and argument of that era. Yes, Bill Clinton's presidency was a period of growth and opportunity, and Democrats are justly nostalgic for it. But it also was a time of withering political fire, as the former president's recent comments on the campaign trail reminded the nation. Hillary Clinton's election also would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page.

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

If you're in Hong Kong, come vote at Dublin Jack's in Central on Tuesday night from 6-9pm A group of Obama supporters (myself included) will be there. There will be two more opportunities to vote in person: the Flying Pan on Sunday Feb.10 from 4-6pm, and again at Dublin Jack's on Tuesday Feb. 12 from 6-9. More info here.

November 19, 2007

Hong Kong's pro-China parties, led by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), did even better than expected in Sunday's District council elections, winning 115 out of 364, seats - up from the previous 62 seats. If you read Chinese all the numbers are here. English-language news reports here and here. Offers of resignations were heard this morning on the Democratic side.

Daisann McLane, author of the wonderful "Learning Cantonese" blog has just written a long post about her Saturday spent with pro-democracy politician Leung Kwong-hung - better known as "Long Hair" - while he went out to mobilize pro-democracy voters this weekend. She also hung out with Chan Po Ying, a district council candidate running in Kwun Tong under the League of Social Democrats. Daisann describes a situation in which the non pro-China vote appeared to have been split in Kwun Tong by what she called a "parachute" Civic Party candidate. The DAB incumbent won. Daisann analyzes the outcome as follows:

It is also human nature to follow the leader. And that is what the DAB is all about. They're taking orders from the Big Party over the border, demonstrating a lockstep discipline that Republican Chairman Karl Rove can only dream of. Meanwhile the pan-Democrats are trying to forge a winning team from a loud, messy family that includes wealthy barristers, feisty unionists, grassroots activists and civil servants with expensive hairdos. The DAB aren't really great campaigners. Their "platform" consists of repeating the correct party line, and their repertoire of tactics is straight out of the old school political playbook: smears, threats and a chicken and rice box for every voter. But compared to the pan-Dems, they look like pros.

She quotes Long Hair's final analysis: "We messed up the district council elections. We should have been more organized."

Through the work of my students I've been trying to follow this whole thing pretty closely. You can find more about Hong Kong's District Council elections at our Hong Kong Stories website than you'll find anywhere else in English that I know of. It's clearly student work - most had never covered an election before and some have still got some things to learn about reporting- but it gives a flavor I think for the atmosphere, issues, developments and personalities involved with Sunday's race.

Hong Kong's elections are a great testing ground for the folks up North in Beijing: They're learning how to go about winning elections against liberal democrats.

If Tsang was genuinely not concerned about "heating up the election" and believed that the DAB candidates were superior to the pan-democrats, there ought to be debates at public forums instead of evasions that result in insufficient information. No matter how mature the voters are, how do they make rational voters? Sophistry is about criticizing the opponent while concealing one's weakness.

Yet, if the pan-democrats are overwhelmingly defeated in the district council elections, I would still feel that it was the fault of the pan-democrats. Regardless of the strategies and tactics of their opponents, they ought to have no fear no matter political conspiracies are worked up by their opponents? But if Jasper Tsang Yuk-sing said he trust the democratic choice of the people of Hong Kong, then why doesn't the DAB believe that the people of Hong Kong should be able to choose their own Chief Executive in 2002? Could they believe in the people when it is advantageous to them, but not when it is not to their advantage?

No matter what the outcome is today, no matter whether the pan-democrats win or lose, it is the choice made by the people of Hong Kong. That should be respected and accepted. Wins or losses are less important than learning the lessons and improving oneself, while avoiding the unnecessary arguments.

It will be interesting to hear what the pundits have to say in the morning.

October 15, 2006

(Photo from Playbill) I just came back from New York where I saw my uncle GerryBamman play Richard Nixon in "Nixon's Nixon." If you're in New York between now and October 28th, go see it. The New York Times recently published a very nice review, pointing out that the play, set in 1974 on the night before Nixon announced his resignation, has been re-staged at a rather apt point in time:

This vision of the country’s leaders retreating happily into a fantasy world of their own invention may strike some in the audience as having a certain grimly funny currency at the moment. The squabbling and finger pointing between politicians bent on burnishing their own images, even as they casually total the numbers of civilians and soldiers who have died on their watch, might also strike an eerily contemporary note (especially since Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial,” suggests that Kissinger continues to play an influential role in United States foreign policy).

There's even an interview with the director, playwright, and the two actors available on YouTube. Check it out: